Why is the U.S. Government Protecting BP?

A little more than 2 weeks ago, the government said nearly 75% of the oil from the worst environmental disaster in history was gone! Government scientists claim most of the oil had dissolved, dispersed or been removed. Now, government scientists are defending their claims against a new report from University of Georgia scientists. According to the Associated Press, “. . . Monday, five Georgia scientists who reviewed government data said that instead of only 26 percent of the oil remaining in the Gulf, as a federal report said earlier this month, it’s actually closer to 80 percent. “Where has all the oil gone? It hasn’t gone anywhere. It still lurks in the deep,” said University of Georgiamarine scientist Chuck Hopkinson. He headed the quick independent look by the GeorgiaSea Grant program at the estimates the White House released.” Hopkins also said, “The Georgia team said it is a misinterpretation of data to claim that oil that is dissolved or dispersed is gone. The bottom line is most of it is still out there, There’s nothing in the report to substantiate the 26 percent.” (Click here for the complete AP story.) The scientists at the University of Georgia are not alone in their skepticism of the government’s oil calculations. Other scientists also challenged the government assertion that nearly 75% of the oil has vanished and is no longer a problem. Yesterday, a story by the online news site 2theadvocate.com said, “I don’t believe the numbers in this report,” said Rick Steiner, a marine conservationist who retired as a professor at the University of Alaska after 30 years — including during the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. Some of the numbers are nothing more than wild guesses, Steiner said. The most-disturbing aspect of the government report is that scientists “did not discuss any methodology it used for driving the results of its study,” Steiner said. “There’s no way to judge the veracity of the estimates they make without knowing how they came up with them,” he said. “And for a scientific report, it’s only four pages long. I mean, come on.” (Click here for the complete 2theadvocate.com story) How could there be such large a discrepancy among scientists? Could the answer be as simple as the government is protecting BP? The government seems to be going to great lengths to control the information the public is hearing. The University of South Florida made a startling discovery early on in the gulf oil spill. It discovered plumes of underwater oil several miles long. Instead of being congratulated on their scientific find, university scientists say they were told to keep quiet by Uncle Sam. The St. Petersburg Times documented this heavy handed treatment by our public servants. The August 10 story said, “The reaction that USF announcement received from the Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agencies that sponsored their research: Shut up. “I got lambasted by the Coast Guard and NOAA when we said there was undersea oil,” USF marine sciences dean William Hogarth said. Some officials even told him to retract USF’s public announcement, he said, comparing it to being “beat up” by federal officials.The USF scientists weren’t alone. Vernon Asper, an oceanographer at the University of Southern Mississippi, was part of a similar effort that met with a similar reaction. “We expected that NOAA would be pleased because we found something very, very interesting,” Asper said. “NOAA instead responded by trying to discredit us. It was just a shock to us.” NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco, in comments she made to reporters in May, expressed strong skepticism about the existence of undersea oil plumes — as did BP’s then-CEO, Tony Hayward. “She basically called us inept idiots,” Asper said. “We took that very personally.” Lubchenco confirmed Monday that her agency told USF and other academic institutions involved in the study of undersea plumes that they should hold off talking so openly about it. “What we asked for, was for people to stop speculating before they had a chance to analyze what they were finding,” Lubchenco said. “We think that’s in everybody’s interest. … We just wanted to try to make sure that we knew something before we speculated about it.”“We had solid evidence, rock solid,” Asper said. “We weren’t speculating.” If he had to do it over again, he said, he’d do it all exactly the same way, despite Lubchenco’s ire.” (Click here for the St. Petersburg Times story.) Why should bona-fide scientists not talk “openly about” the worst ecological disaster in history? Who does that help? The fishermen who probably lost their livelihood? The tourist locations that have lost vacationers? Real estate owners whose property values have declined? These people and many more have been damaged by BP. What’s the big secret here? In another move that appears to protect BP, the government is requiring a confidentiality agreement to gain access to study the effects of the oil spill in many areas of the Gulf of Mexico. According to ecosystem biologist Linda Hooper-Bui, Associate Professor at the University of Louisiana, her job as an independent researcher is being made more difficult by government lawyers. Two weeks ago, the professor wrote, “I study insect and plant communities in near-shore habitats fringing the Gulf, and my work has gotten measurably harder in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. It’s not hazardous conditions associated with oil and dispersants that are hampering our scientific efforts. Rather, it’s the confidentiality agreements that come with signing up to work on large research projects shepherded by government entities and BP . . . I am having trouble conducting my research without signing confidentiality agreements or agreeing to other conditions that restrict my ability to tell a robust and truthful scientific story.” (Click here to read Professor Hooper-Bui’s full story.) So why is the government working overtime to protect BP and keep American citizens in the dark? How much is BP’s potential liability? A hundred billion bucks? A trillion bucks? Who knows, but it is surely a very big number. Could it be that a bankruptcy of BP would be a worse financial disaster than Lehman Brothers? Some say yes! Gordon T. Long wrote a lengthy BP bankruptcy article for “The Market Oracle.” He said recently, “I could not have stated it any clearer than Jim Sinclair at jsmineset.com: People are seriously underestimating how much liquidity in the global financial world is dependent on a solvent BP. BP extends credit – through trading and finance. They extend the amounts, quality and duration of credit a bank could only dream of. The Gold community should think about the financial muscle behind a company with 100+ years of proven oil and gas reserves. Think about that in comparison with what a bank, with few tangible assets, (truly, not allegedly) possesses (no wonder they all started trading for a living!). Then think about what happens if BP goes under. This is no bank. With proven reserves and wells in the ground, equity in fields all over the planet, in terms of credit quality and credit provision – nothing can match an oil major. God only knows how many assets around the planet are dependent on credit and finance extended from BP. It is likely to dwarf any banking entity in multiples.” (Click here for The Market Oracle story in its entirety.) The government knows that a BP bankruptcy would cause a giant financial meltdown that would probably make what happened in 2008 look tame. That is the reason I think the government is working so hard to protect BP. In June, the President said, “Untold damage is being done to the environment — damage that could last for decades.” I think the President got it right the first time.

About the Author

Greg Hunter

Greg is the producer and creator of USAWatchdog.com. The site’s slogan is “analyzing the news to give you a clear picture of what’s really going on.” The site will keep an eye on the government, your financial interests and cut through the media spin. USAWatchdog.com is neither Democrat nor Republican, Liberal or Conservative. Before creating and producing the site, Greg spent nearly 9 years as a network and investigative correspondent. He worked for ABC News and Good Morning America for nearly 6 years. Most recently, Greg worked for CNN for shows such as Paula Zahn Now, American Morning and various CNN business shows.

Comments

John Bernard08/20/2010 •

So let’s see now. Very little remaining oil in the Gulf, no inflation, economic recovery as planned, definite man caused climate change, no debt monetization; so why wouldn’t we trust our government? Clearly these critics are simply self aggrandizing opponents of the truth kind of like Holocaust Deniers. After all they are marine conservationists and must be treated with skepticism. Our government only wants whats best for us, thanks nanny,and would never lie or distort a situation to lull us back to sleep. What is wrong with these people?

The above comments might be offered by someone who noticed that Obama wore some kind of sweater or something.

Greg,
Great article. Loved the way you pulled it together. You ran an article about this by a guest writer a while back. I think the guy that was making the claim, a well respected oil man drowned a week or so later. I just read where Wood Hole found an oil “plume”.
And Greg, if BP goes bankrupt, more capital will be destroyed [taken out of the system] than BP created. This was real capital backed by a real asset, not the make believe money the Fed is printing.

Why, this here is just good old Texas figurin’ boys. You take your 75% and your 75% and you get one plus a whole nuther half.

And the Gulf of Texas is plenty big enough for three halves. Aww, sure it is. That’s how that oil can be mostly gone while it’s mostly still there.

It’s about optics. You know, the way when you look at a fish down in the water it isn’t actually where it seems to be. It’s actually over there a little bit. It’s there but it’s not there.

Same with oil. When you look at oil in the water, it isn’t actually there unless you know how to get it out of the water. If you savvy how to get it out of the water then it’s plain to see that it’s all there, and it’s all BP’s. Why, even the gummint will back that.

As soon as Kevin Costner or some other feller figures out how to get that 75% that’s not in the Gulf back out of the Gulf it’ll be BP’s oil instantly, and he’ll have to buy it from ’em at their price just as fast as he pulls it out. Any oil he misses isn’t theirs and isn’t there.

Seriously, though, the bit about the optics is bang on. Can’t see it, taint there. I bet we can thank, in large part, their abundant use of the toxic dispersant for that.

The absolute worst part of this whole cover-up?? The fact that they’re urging people to carry on as if everything is fixed. Any toxic crap in the waters won’t be evident until enough people (i.e., statistically significant) start showing clusters of health problems decades down the road, and even then will it be provable beyond a reasonable doubt that it is due exclusively to BP’s oil and/or dispersant (already heard one news story where they’re already requiring local municipalities wanting to keep their coast clean to “DNA” any oil found to see if it’s BP’s or not, which then dictates whether or not they’re allowed to clean it up)?

And then there’s the seafood… Who here seriously thinks the FDA is going to double down to test the safety of seafood coming out of the Gulf, especially now that most of the oil is officially “gone?” Add to that, for what testing they do perform, they have their routine and standard lab tests all written down in manuals that they perform. Think the government is going to modify/expand seafood testing methods to account for the possible presence of new oil- and dispersant-related contaminants in our food? This is where scientists like Linda Hooper-Bui come into play — they’re the ones who’ll notice if certain ecological niches along the Gulf start showing evidence of negative impact. Heck, even the whole topic of what happened to the dispersant, in terms of what different types of chemical pathways were followed via reactions and breakdowns throughout the wide variety of ecological zones (oceanic and land-based) is a massive series research projects all on it’s own.

The truth is somewhere in the middle. Both are wrong. I don’t have facts, just history.

The Earth is a highly efficient microcosm that seeks equilibrium; the datum for our equalibrium is set by the Sun’s output (yeah, that was a slam at the Global Warming Religion). And yes, Earth is a microcosm–we are just a little speck. We are the size of a zit on our Suns surface. Our Sun isn’t even a speck on the surface of Antares. We are so insignificant. We are nothing more than a closed-end experiment.

The Gulf is full of hot water and plentiful nutrients that creates a huge petri dish of growth. Even crude oil gets eaten-up there.

Are the professors wrong? No. Is the Administration fudging the numbers? Yes. Is the MSM critical of our messiah? No. Is this a huge ecological disaster? Yes.

Will Earth recover? Hell yes!

The Administration got a 20 billion dollar political slush fund from BP. In return, Eric Holder and the administration will grant immunity to BP. A quid pro quote. Chicago style politics at a national level.

I was at a dinner party the other evening, and one man said that consequences need to be decisive and severe. He said very openly that certain executive BP men should be hanged. He was serious. Everyone there said that they agreed with him.

Before we start persecuting the people at BP, we need to “climb-up” to the philosophical plane of thought.

Who purchases and uses the products that BP refiines from oil that was supposed to come from Macado? The very same people who want BP execs hanged.

Who drives their Prius cars, sets their thermostats high or low (depending on the season), who has at least one refrigerator, who has a job, who flies to tropical places to SCUBA, and who…?

ANSWER: All of the same people who want BP execs hanged without “due process of the law” are using the fruits of what BP brings to the market place. BP would not exist if it were not for the lifestyles of the people at rrr’s party.

Who is wearing clothing that has spandex, rayon, nylon, and crayon in it? Who is wearing cotton that was made by using tractors, trucks, combines, and textile mills? Who bought those clothes from a well lit and air conditioned Kohl’s or Macy’s?

THE ANSWER IS: Every person who wants BP execs hanged without due process.

We are BP. BP exists because we as consumers, involved in the last vestiges of a free market, vote for BP when we buy gasoline, or clothes, or food. It does not matter which retailer we buy from. You may strictly buy Chevron gasoline; that does not matter, you are still, to this day, voting for BP!

MarkM,
I did not say I wanted them hanged just prosecuted for crime. I am all for due process, but I feel the process will never begin. You make good points, but just because we all use petroleum products desn’t mean BP should get a free pass for wrongdoing. Your outbursts are always welcome here. Thank you for your comment.
Greg

Great reporting. I think you should mention how much BP contributed to Obama’s campaign, too. Also, I suggest you check out Wayne Madsen’s reporting on Obama’s CIA background to get a fuller picture of his premeditated treachery on this and many other issues (health care, financial regulation, standing up for Israel when they murder an American citizen in international waters, etc.)

“standing up for Israel when they murder an American citizen in international waters, etc.”….OK, how did I miss this? Are you talking about the Turkish extremist flotilla that tried to run the Israeli naval blockade? I saw Obama stand up for the Muslims, saw where he slighted Netanyahu, missed where he stood up for Israel. And what American was killed, missed that. Please explain.
I’ve seen Obama castrate the CIA. Please explain his CIA connection; other than the one where he weakens it.

Thanks for the report Greg. I do not believe anything the government says anymore. This is why I have come to appreciate the internet so much….I can search here and always find the truth. Of course the truth varies over time and each persons truth is a little different. The same cover ups can be said about the FDA. They say Aspartame is safe, most people do not realize it is a nerve agent originally designed as a pesticide. They also tell me that raw milk is unsafe, and that is why I like to drink it. One of the biggest scams of this century is all the processed garbage most americans call food….this is why so many take so many drugs. Montsanto and Big Pharma win while the American gets more obese and less healthy.

Thank you for being courageous and speaking out…we occasionally hear what happens to those who are willing to say what is really happening and it’s not pretty.
So, keep talking and eventually the voice of TRUTH will be known as more and more join the chorus…

Greg – Thanks for not backing down on this issue today on the radio. I always enjoy the guests on the show, but sometimes they get a little bit too much leeway with the truth. Anamanpour was TOTALLY fudging on this topic! MSM live and in action. Again – thanks for being a bulldog on this and so many other issues. I read every column and catch you when ever you are on the radio. Keep up the great work.

I have just read an article on “Strike the Root” that includes a report from a scientist who has studied the gulf of Mexico and found something very troubling .Here is the intro into the article.

Oceanographic satellite data now shows that the Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico has stalled as a consequence of the BP oil spill [volcano] disaster. This according to Dr. Gianluigi Zangari, an Italian theoretical physicist, and major complex and chaotic systems analyst at the Frascati National Laboratories in Italy..He further notes that the effects of this stall have also begun to spread to the Gulf Stream. This is because the Loop Current is a crucial element of the Gulf Stream itself and why it is commonly referred to as the “main engine” of the Stream.

The concern now, is whether or not natural processes can re-establish the stalled Loop Current. If not, we could begin to see global crop failures as early as 2011. Oceanographic satellite data now shows that as of July 28, the Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico (and Gulf Stream) has stalled as a consequence of the BP oil spill disaster. This according to Dr. Gianluigi Zangari, an Italian theoretical physicist, and major complex and chaotic systems analyst at the Frascati National Laboratories in Italy.

Apparently the Oil and chemical dispersant has heated up the waters which has caused the loop to stall. Here is a link to the article for those who are interested.

One set of scientists says X another set says Y. Both are government financed. Obviously one is right and the other wrong. But I do not see the logical step that indicates which is right and which is wrong, or that both may be wrong. Nor do I see the logical step that indicates what the motivation of each set of scientists is.

Quarqy,
The evidence is overwhelming and irrefutable; the spill is MUCH worse than BP and the government claims. Please check out this story called “Oil Plume From Spill Persists, Data Show”. You can find it in the “Hunter’s Top Stories” on the home page of this site. Thank you for your comment and support.
Greg

your question asking how much is bp’s liability, is disturbing. i can just see bp’s former position of credit strength entangled in the $1.5 quadrillion otc mess. if so it’s easy to see the need to backstop bp. too big too fail may just apply here. good article as usual.

I appreciate the information. I heard pieces from different places, but not all in one place, especially the financial information. I wonder especially about the methane story and wonder if that really poses a problem to gulf coast residents in a big storm. I am sorry for NOAA since it has been a good agency – it seems to be going down the path FEMA took. We need a viable NOAA in order to deal with ongoing degradation in our oceans and atmosphere.

Thanks for a really good thread! USAWatchdog attracks people who can think rationally, express their opinions well, and they use factoids or citations that prove their points well. On this site, I rarely read a post from a knee-jerk neanderthal spouting MSM dogma.

In some cases, I alter, or rethink my opinions based on Greg’s article or because of a response. The citations and factoids can be convincing.

Im not naturally inclined to defend the Gov but, science does tend to support there findings. Just like in the air light elements float heavy elements sink. As the oil mixture seperates it is possable for some of the heavies to settle out and sink but a mid leval plume is unlikely to remain long before bonding into heavier elements. That was a high pressure leak indicating it was mostly lights that would have evaperated quickly once hitting the surfacein the hot gulf waters. and the ocean itself is Cleaned by the sand at its shores, Gods own filter system and copied in swimming pools around the world.

Denny,
Now the gov is back-tracking check out this story last week: “Senior U.S. scientist rescinds previous claim that 3/4 of oil from spill is gone, says most is still there” You can fing it in Hunter’s top stories. Thank you for your comment.
Greg

I said day 3 this war all over again
1814 and guess what? they won.
The south is being genocided. Hey dumb people
Shoot a Brit exec they are killing you
F— um. Oil board those b—–
Thad Alvin the chipmuck is traitor
Gulf War II boys and girls and where the f— is our military?
Oh! stealing more f—- oil
F—- BP, f— the queen who owns BP
They need to die as they are killing us
Mark my words kill a Brit before they kill you

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Greg is the producer and creator of Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com. The site’s slogan is “analyzing the news to give you a clear picture of what’s really going on.” The site will keep an eye on the government, your financial interests and cut through the media spin.

USAWatchdog.com is neither Democrat nor Republican, Liberal or Conservative. Before creating and producing the site, Greg spent nearly 9 years as a network and investigative correspondent. He worked for ABC News and Good Morning America for nearly 6 years. Most recently, Greg worked for CNN for shows such as Paula Zahn Now, American Morning and various CNN business shows.